Sleeping
by prepare4trouble
Summary: A month after receiving terrible injuries, fully recovered physically, Ezra is still sleeping. It falls to Kanan to enter his mind and bring him home. Prompt from SWR Requests.


A/N - Based on a prompt on Tumblr:

"Ezra is comatose and the only way to pull him out if it is for Kanan to use the force and enter his mind.

Kanan has been blind for almost a year. Upon entering his padawan's mind, he actually finds himself needing to adjust to all the visual stimulation, but it's very welcome. He's also stunned to see how much Ezra's grown up in such a short amount of time - in his mind's eye he's still the blueberry with the floppy hair and feet that don't touch the ground when sitting on those shipping containers.  
(Maybe Kanan also gets to have a surreal moment where he "sees" himself as he is now - through Ezra's memory of him - and gets to check out the scar over his blinded eyes and that 'beard of sorrow' in a mirror in the dream.)  
They need to have a heart-to-heart in order for Ezra to pull out of the coma. Ezra is upset and it's his hangup that's keeping him under. Maybe Kanan has to work something out as well. They need to find a way to move forward so Ezra can wake up."

I didn't manage to get all the aspects of it in there, but hopefully I got enough."

* * *

Sleeping

You don't have to do this. You know that, right?"

He could feel Hera's familiar presence to his right. Her voice was tentative. Without even trying, he could feel her worry spilling through the Force, her deep concern for both Ezra and himself. When he didn't respond, she touched his shoulder gently.

Kanan shook his head. "I know that I _do_ have to," he corrected her. "What I don't know is how. Not really."

Entering another's mind. It was risky, for both people involved. Worse, depending on how it was done, there had been those that said the ability teetered on the edge of the Dark Side. Just like the mind trick, it had the potential to be used for great evil as well as good. The Jedi had used the ability very rarely, only for times such as this, when a life depended on it.

But of course, such a rare and dangerous technique was not taught to someone at the level he had been at the time the Jedi were destroyed. It had rarely been taught to anybody. Which left him with a choice that was no choice at all; stumble through and hope not to make too devastating a mistake, or do nothing and sit by Ezra's side as he slowly faded away.

"Are you sure he's not going to just wake up on his own?" Hera asked. "The med droid said he's fine now, physically. Maybe it's just a case of waiting until he's ready."

"I can feel his presence," Kanan told her, "but it's so faint now. It's like he moves further away every day. If there's no physical reason why he isn't awake, then it's something else, and whatever it is isn't going to go away on its own. Not after all this time."

Hera drew in a slow intake of breath, her hand stilled on his arm and he imagined her stricken expression as he felt her pain through the Force. "I just don't want to lose both of you," she whispered.

Kanan placed an arm around her and drew her in close, squeezing her against him. "You won't," he promised.

He just hoped that he was telling the truth.

* * *

Ezra had been unconscious when they had found him, after he failed to check in during a mission. Comatose, badly beaten, completely unresponsive to any stimuli. Zeb had been the one to bring him in, slung carefully over one shoulder, he had carried him the half mile back to the Ghost, stopping to check every other step that the younger man was still breathing. He had hovered nervously by his bedside, along with the rest of the crew, as they waited for news that did not come.

That had been over a month ago.

They kept watch in shifts, never leaving him alone for more than a few moments for fear that he would wake alone and afraid, surrounded by the machines that were keeping him alive; ensuring that his body got the required nutrients as he slept, monitoring his breathing, his heartbeat, his vital signs, to alert the med-droid should anything change. But nothing had changed. The cuts and bruises had healed, the swelling had gone down, there was nothing wrong with him at all, he was simply asleep, and unable to wake.

* * *

"When will you do it?" Hera asked him.

"It has to be soon," Kanan replied. "The longer I leave it, the more difficult it's going to be. He's already so far away."

Hera nodded, but without understanding. There was no possible way that the process could make sense to her, not when he barely understood it himself. "Will it hurt him?" she asked.

Kanan knew without asking that she was thinking about Maul, about the time he extracted information from her against her will. He remembered the horror in her voice as she had told him what he had done. He shook his head. "No," he promised her. "It's not like… what you're thinking of. I'm going to go…" he paused, shook his head, "I'm going to _try_ to go inside his mind and lead him back. I think he's gotten lost somehow, he just needs somebody to show him the way."

"I hope you're right," Hera told him.

Kanan gently touched Ezra's face, running his fingertips over the curve of his cheek, and feeling the twin bumps of rough skin that were Ezra's scars. "So do I," he muttered.

* * *

Kanan concentrated all of his focus on Ezra's small presence within the Force. It felt wrong for him to be so small, so far away. His apprentice's presence had always been so large, overwhelming at times. Kanan reached out to him, over the vast distance between them.

The connection between them had never felt weaker. He held on as tightly as he could, anchoring himself to Ezra, calling upon overheard conversations, what little information the holocron had held on the subject, and his own imagination, he pushed forward. Unable to pull Ezra back toward him, he pushed forward, going to meet him where he was.

He met resistance at first, the distance between them was too great, and it almost seemed as though Ezra were repelling him, until finally, he got a response. Not the small one he had expected, a twitch of metaphysical fingers as Ezra allowed him to take hold; no, Ezra pounced on him, leapt, threw himself at his Master with all of his strength and held on so tightly that Kanan couldn't have gotten away if he had tried.

He felt himself falling, weighed down by Ezra's presence. It made no sense, they were both on solid ground on the rebel base, there was nowhere to fall. But falling they were, hard and fast toward the ground.

* * *

Kanan let out a gasp of shock and slumped forward unexpectedly. His hand dropped from Ezra's arm and fell slack to his side, his head and shoulders rested on top of Ezra's prone form.

"Kanan!" Hera cried. She tried to lift him, but his unconscious body was too heavy for her to move without risking dropping him onto the ground. She checked his pulse, his breathing, they both appeared normal.

He was simply asleep, just like Ezra.

"Zeb, Sabine!" she called out. "Someone! I need some help in here!"

As the others ran into the room and helped Kanan to the second bed, she was overcome by a wave of despair. She couldn't lose them both. She couldn't lose either one, but both at the same time? The idea of it was too much to bear.

* * *

"Kanan?"

Ezra sounded confused, but he sounded like Ezra, and after so long without hearing the sound of his voice, even knowing that this was not entirely real, the relief was palpable.

"What are you _doing_ here, Kanan?"

The landing had been softer than he had expected, in that there had been no landing at all, they had simply stopped falling. Kanan shook his head to clear it. He was standing, or at the very least he appeared to be standing, on the ground. Ezra was sitting a few feet away, waiting expectantly for an answer.

"I…" Kanan frowned. "I came to bring you home."

He could feel Ezra's confusion through the Force, but - he frowned, reached outward to the space around him - that was _all_ he could feel. Aside from his connection to Ezra, he could sense nothing at all of his surroundings. It was disconcerting, like the world had disappeared. It made a kind of sense, he supposed. There was no world here to sense, no objects around him. He was inside Ezra's mind. He sucked in a breath, which was impossible considering he wasn't even really in his body, but it felt like he was. He tried to ignore the feeling of complete disconnection that the absence of the Force left him with.

Ezra hadn't replied.

"You've been in a coma for over a month, Ezra." he told him. "You're slipping away little by little; there's nothing wrong with you physically, you just need to wake up. Can you do that?"

"I don't… No. What are you talking about? I _am_ awake."

Kanan reached out to him. His fingers, despite not being real, touched the very real feeling fabric of Ezra's jumpsuit as he squeezed his shoulder gently. "What's the last thing you remember?" he asked. "Before you were here."

Ezra turned his head to face him. "Pain," he whispered.

* * *

Hera paced the room, agitation stirring in her chest as she looked from the now familiar sleeping form of Ezra, to Kanan and back again. He had been lifted onto the second bed in the small room that served as a medical bay for the base. He lay fully clothed, on his back. His mask had been removed, exposing the scar across his face for all to see. Even though the only people there were those that he loved and trusted, and that he had allowed to see the injury before, it still felt like an intrusion to her. It was a private thing to him, and although she didn't understand that, she respected it.

Kanan had not been hooked up to the same monitoring devices that kept a constant check on Ezra's physical condition, simply because they did not have a second set of machinery. Resources were scarce, and they were badly in need of medical supplies. She kept a close eye on his chest, watching the rise and fall as a way of assuring herself that he was still alive. He was simply sleeping, and no matter what they did, he refused to wake.

Zeb and Sabine both sat on the chairs in between the two beds, while Chopper hovered nervously by the door, bleeping quietly, as though he were afraid of waking the two sleeping Jedi.

"Come back to us," Hera said.

Neither one of them responded.

* * *

"I was heading back to the rendezvous point," Ezra told him. "My comm unit had gone down, so I missed my last check in. I knew you'd be worried, so I was rushing back. I don't know what happened, I guess I let my guard down. I felt… something. Then they hit me from behind."

"Blaster fire," Kanan supplied. "Set to stun, but only barely, it did quite a bit of damage. Hera tells me the mark has only just begun to fade."

"Only just…" Ezra shifted in his position on the ground. "You said a month?"

Kanan nodded. "Give or take."

"It feels like a few minutes. Or… years? I don't even know."

Kanan frowned. He offered his hand to Ezra. His apprentice took it, and Kanan pulled him to his feet. Well, not really, he reminded himself. In reality they were both in the medical bay back on the Atollon base, but it felt like he pulled him to his feet. "Right, well it hasn't been minutes, or years. It's been just over a month and that's too long. You need to wake up now, before you can't any more."

"No," Ezra told him. "You don't understand. I hadn't finished telling you what happened."

Kanan sighed tolerantly. "Tell me when you wake up," he said. He was eager to get back to reality. He hadn't fully realized until now exactly how reliant on the Force he had become, for everything. To suddenly find himself without it was unsettling. His connection to it here was limited to his connection to Ezra, and that was everywhere, all around him. Beyond that, he had no idea of what was happening around him. It was like being blinded all over again.

"I can't wake up," Ezra told him. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. Whoever it was that caught me, I think he must have done something, because I've been trying, but it's just not happening. I'm trapped here. And I think you are now too."

* * *

"Maybe he's in there trying to talk him into coming back," Sabine suggested as she handed the steaming cup to Hera. "Any minute now, they're both going to wake up and laugh at us for worrying."

"Yeah," Zeb added. "This Jedi stuff, we don't know how it works. Half the time I'm convinced Kanan's just making it up as he goes along."

Hera sighed and took a sip of the warm drink. It had been almost an hour with no signs of life from either Jedi. Unfortunately, Zeb was right, Kanan hadn't known what he was doing, and that worried her more than anything else. "This isn't going to be how we lose them," she said. "Not after everything that's happened, not like this."

* * *

"What do you mean you're trapped here?" Kanan fired at him. He was pacing now, after a fashion; slowly and carefully, feeling a little off balance, with one arm outstretched ahead of him in a way that he hadn't needed to in months. The chances were that there were no obstacles, but then, this was Ezra's mind, he expected there to be more than a little clutter.

"Well," Ezra said. "You know, stuck? Unable to leave? I've been here a while now, and I can't get out. I can't think of any other way to put it."

Kanan sighed. "Fine. Great. Thanks for the clarification." He stopped walking and focussed on pulling himself out of Ezra's mind and back into his own body. Nothing happened; he found himself anchored in place, as though this were the real world, and there was nowhere else for him to go. He took a deep breath, and tried again. Still nothing. Still no connection to the Force either. He wondered whether that was the reason that he couldn't get out. He growled softly under his breath and resumed his unsteady walk.

Ezra watched him for a moment. "Look, stop pacing, will you?" he told him.

Kanan ignored him and continued to pace the apparently empty space.

"Kanan, please. Listen to me, there's something I need to tell you. Something important."

He slowed to a stop and turned to face his Padawan.

"It's not such a bad place," Ezra told him. There's no Empire in here, no war. No pain, or death, no…"

"…Ability to survive in the real world without constant monitoring from a med-droid?" Kanan finished for him. "And even then, you're slipping away. If you stay here, you'll die."

Ezra thought about that for a while. "You don't understand," he said. "You…" he stopped, gasped. "You need to take your mask off!" he announced suddenly, in a change of conversational direction that made Kanan's head spin.

"What?"

"Think about it. It's not really there," Ezra told him. "Nothing is, it's all in our imaginations. Or, just mine I guess. So we can do things here that we can't do in reality. When you arrived, I was flying. If you take your mask off…"

He would - he might - be able to see. Kanan's fingers twitched instinctively toward his face, but he stilled them. "That's not important," he said. He kept his eyes firmly closed underneath the mask.

"I can't sense the Force in here," Ezra told him. "I'm guessing you can't either, so wouldn't being able to see be useful right now?"

"It would always be useful," Kanan snapped, then instantly regretted his tone. It would be useful, but he couldn't have it. It had taken him a long time to get to a place where he was okay with that. Getting his sight back, even if it wasn't real, he didn't know how he would react when it was time to pack it away again and head back to reality. "What have you been doing to try to get out of here?"

"Oh… the usual," Ezra said.

Kanan frowned. "The usual? There is no 'usual' in this situation!"

"You know, just trying again and again. The flying, I figured if I could get high enough… I even tried meditation, and you know how much I hate that. That actually felt like I was getting somewhere for a while though. Until it didn't."

Kanan could sense Ezra's sincerity, he was connected to him here in a way he couldn't possibly be in the real world. If meditation had been working, perhaps he could use his superior ability and experience at the discipline to pull them both out.

"I also tried to open the door," Ezra added. "But it's locked."

"Door? What door?"

"The one over there," he sensed Ezra gesture with a hand.

Kanan automatically reached out with the Force to locate the door, and to find out what might be on the other side of it. He came up against a wall of nothing. Frustration gnawed at him, and his hand inched closer to the mask covering his face. "You didn't think to mention this until now?"

"Like I said, it's locked."

"Is there anything else you've forgotten to mention?" he asked. "a big sign saying 'Exit here,' or…" he stopped, took a breath. It seemed pointless to try to pry answers out of Ezra when there was a chance that he could see them for himself. He allowed his hand to raise to his face. He hesitated there, fingers touching the smooth, painted surface. He took a deep breath and held it as he carefully removed the mask that covered his eyes.

The world lightened incrementally even before he opened his eyes, which he did slowly and tentatively, and then immediately slammed them closed again, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of visual stimuli. He gasped.

Ezra was by his side in an instant. "Are you okay?"

He nodded, and allowed his eyes to open a crack. The light flooded in, painfully bright. He blinked and stared around him, temporarily unable to make any sense of what he was seeing. For the first time in almost a year, there was light. There was color.

There was Ezra…

* * *

It was late. She didn't even know what time it was, and she didn't have the strength to check. Instead, Hera sat quietly by Kanan's bedside. She shivered, more from exhaustion than the cold, the temperature in the room remained relatively stable and the blanket that Sabine had draped around her shoulders kept her warm.

Out of the corner of her eye, she was aware of Sabine in her usual chair pushed up against the edge of Ezra's bed. She sat motionless, but Hera was certain that she was wide awake, keeping watch.

She shifted to a more comfortable position and allowed her eyes to flicker closed, despite the best efforts of her mind, her body finally won that battle.

* * *

Ezra came into focus slowly, not because of any issues with his eyes, which he knew were not really working at all, but because of his mind failing to keep up with what he was seeing, failing to understand. Deprived of sight for so long, he had forged new neural pathways, new ways to experience the world. To suddenly find those pathways flooded with light was jarring, to say the least.

"Kanan?"

This had probably been a mistake. He looked around him as his mind caught up. What he had assumed to be an empty room turned out to be a grassy meadow reminiscent of parts of Lothal. Above him, the sky was a brilliant blue, the tall grass was yellow, the air suddenly smelled fresher. He took a deep breath through his nose, before he turned to look at Ezra.

He looked so different. He had known that he had cut his hair, he had touched the resulting style, at Ezra's insistence. He had never even considered the effect it would have on Ezra's face. He looked older now, more so than he should for the short time it had been since he had seen him last. Recent events had taken their toll. With his new style, the two scars on his cheek became more prominent. He looked thinner too, drawn almost. But it was still so good to see him.

Ezra locked eyes - still that familiar, brilliant shade of blue - with him, and grinned widely. "Told you," he said.

"Yeah." He had. "So…"

He couldn't stop _looking_. At everything. He raised his hand and examined it closely before turning over that mask was still gripped in his fist. With his other hand, he gently ran his fingers over the rough and smooth ripples of the burn. It was still there, it just didn't matter any more. Not here.

He was allowing himself to become distracted. He needed to focus. "Where's the door?"

Ezra gestured with his hand to somewhere behind Kanan. He found himself staring for a moment at the tip of Ezra's finger, before he turned to find a large red door sitting suspended in the middle of the meadow.

"Right," he said. "Okay. That's different."

He turned slowly around, surveying the area carefully. Apart from himself and Ezra, and the door, there was nothing else around. He walked up to the door, the handle was a golden color that contrasted nicely with the red of the door itself. The sunlight glinted off of it, shining brightly. He turned his eyes briefly back to the sky, then focussed his attention back on the door.

"Have you explored the area any further away than this? Are there any other doors, or anything else worth mentioning?"

Ezra shrugged. "No matter where I go, I just end up back here. I mean, This is supposed to be my own head, right? If this is all there is in here, that's pretty depressing." He grinned.

"Ezra, this door leads somewhere. Probably back to consciousness. You just need to work out how to open it." Kanan rolled his eyes, "I can't believe you didn't think to mention this to me first!"

He tried the handle, it turned, but the door did not open. No surprise there. There was an old fashioned keyhole just underneath the handle. He pressed a finger against it and traced the shape as he turned back to look at Ezra, mostly just because he could.

"Have you tried looking for a key?"

"Where?"

"Anywhere!"

He knelt down and began to run his hands through the long grass, searching for something that would allow him to open the door. Ezra stood to one side and watched him. "It's not so bad here, you know," he said.

Kanan frowned. His hand swept over a thin stick and he picked it up, if he could find another, maybe he could pick the lock. He had no idea how to do that, but perhaps he could work it out. Or Ezra could. "I'm sure it's fine, if you like being a prisoner in your own head. Or in my case, in somebody else's. Personally, I'd choose the real world."

"Really? Even though you can see in here?"

Kanan sighed. Yellow grass, blue sky and white clouds filled his vision. It wasn't real, he reminded himself. "Even then. Even if I wanted to stay, and I don't, I couldn't do that to Hera. Or to anyone who cares about us. This past month while you've been away…"

"Tell me," Ezra said. "What have I missed?"

Kanan stopped his search and turned to look at Ezra again. "Not much," he said. "A whole lot of sitting around, waiting for you to get better. I don't think Hera's slept properly all that time, I haven't smelled paint on Sabine in weeks."

"Really?"

Ezra actually sounded surprised at that.

"Of course really. I've been at a loose end, Zeb… I think he blames himself for not finding you sooner. Even Chopper hasn't been himself."

He turned back to the ground and resumed his fingertip search, moving a little further from the door now. "So any time you feel like helping out…"

"There's no need," Ezra told him.

Kanan frowned and turned back to Ezra one more time. His apprentice was holding a large, gold colored key in one hand. He held it out in Kanan's direction.

"Tell me you didn't have that the whole time." Kanan demanded, eyes narrowing.

"No," Ezra stared at the key, apparently as confused by its presence as Kanan. "It just… appeared," Ezra told him. "I think it means I'm ready to go back."

* * *

She was woken by someone shaking her gently, whispering her name over and over again. Hera moaned and pushed them away, but they returned, more persistent this time. Her neck ached from the uncomfortable sleeping position. The room was dimmed, but still bright enough to see, and her bleary eyes focussed on Sabine, standing next to her.

"They're waking up," she said with a grin.

Hera was wide awake in an instant. Kanan was up already, the bed bent slightly to prop him up into a sitting position. His eyes were still closed, but that was normal for him now. He was very obviously awake, if exhausted.

"You're back," she said.

He smiled, just a little. "Was there ever any doubt?" She leaned forward and touched him gently on the arm. He grabbed the hand and squeezed. "I got him," he said. His voice sounded weak, but triumphant.

Hera glanced over to the other bed. Ezra lay in the same position that he had for the past month, he looked exactly the same. Sabine hovered nearby, a concerned expression on her face. She looked at the med-droid for confirmation.

"His vital signs are improving," the droid told her.

"He's back," Kanan added. His eyes opened for just a moment, and Hera watched them flick from left to right, as though he were looking for something. His jaw clenched and a momentary shadow of disappointment crossed his face, before he allowed them to close again. "Give him a while, he'll get here." He murmured.

Hera nodded. She squeezed his hand in agreement. "Okay, we can wait. What happened in there? Are you alright?"

He didn't answer, he was already asleep. That was okay, as long as it was a natural sleep, one that he would wake from. She glanced at Sabine and Zeb.

"We should go," Zeb told them. "Let them rest. Not that they've exactly done anything else recently."

Hera gave the two sleeping Jedi a final glance as they filtered out of the room. As they left, for the first time since his arrival there, Ezra shifted slightly in his sleep. She smiled.

Everything was going to be alright.


End file.
